The latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s Sample series, Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendezimmediately shot to the top of streamers’ most-watched lists after its release last week. However, the true crime series quickly drew criticism for the show’s insinuations that the two convicted murderers had more than a connection and developed a sexual relationship.

The backlash against the series — which came just as it was announced that a new Netflix docuseries about the Menendez brothers would be in the works, in which the two would star — came swiftly on Friday, the day after the nine-episode fictionalized adaptation of the 1989 murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez and its aftermath premiered on the streamer. First, a wave of reactions from the Menendez supporter community, which has grown recently on TikTok and Instagram, swept social media as viewers took issue with suggestions in Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan’s script that the brothers were also lovers. Then, Erik Menendez jumped into the conversation to condemn the series as “lies and ruinous character portrayals.”

Murphy’s show makes several allusions to possible incest, but the series is as much about generational trauma as it is about America’s obsession with material wealth, parodying the more questionable trends of early-’90s Los Angeles (Milli Vanilli is ubiquitous on the series’ soundtrack).

In the second episode, this includes the brothers briefly kissing after Lyle places his hands on Erik’s neck; later in the same sequence, Lyle is seen interrupting Erik while he’s dancing with a woman at a party in their room at the Hotel Bel-Air, before wiping cocaine from his nose and sticking his thumb in his brother’s mouth. Later, in a sequence in episode six that is pretty clearly telegraphed as a moment of fantasy, mother Kitty Menendez climbs a flight of stairs to find her sons showering together.

Lyle testified at their second joint trial that he never had a sexual relationship with his brother. Robert Rand, who wrote the definitive 2018 book on the brothers’ crime, The Menendez Murderswhat is the highlight of following their case closely as a reporter since the day after the murders, said The Hollywood Reporter the same phone call this weekend, in which he described the brothers as traditional sports fanatics who did not use drugs.

Rand explained that the show’s portrayal of the brothers’ relationship as likely incestuous is inaccurate. The show paints a picture of the relationship the brothers had that lives in the minds of those around them.

“I don’t believe Erik and Lyle Menendez were ever lovers. I think that’s a fantasy that was in Dominick Dunne’s (the reporter played by Nathan Lane on the show) mind,” Rand explained. “There were rumors during the trial that maybe there was some kind of strange relationship between Erik and Lyle themselves. But I believe the only physical contact that they had is what Lyle testified to, that when Lyle was 8 years old, he took Erik out to the woods and played with him with a toothbrush — which (their father) José had done to him. And so I certainly wouldn’t call that a sexual relationship. It’s a response to trauma.”

Lyle Menendez’s testimony at the trial was just as explosive in the courtroom as it was on the show, Rand indicated. The veteran journalist told THR that reporters and jurors in the courtroom that day were in tears as the accused killer explained how he abused Erik the same way he abused his father.

In the series, Lyle, played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez, confesses this during a private conversation with his attorney, Leslie Abramson, played by Ari Graynor, while recounting the abuse he and his brother suffered at the hands of their father, José.

The Menendez brothers are currently incarcerated at Donovan Correctional Facility in California and are unable to access Netflix while in prison. Erik Menendez was likely given a description of the show’s depiction of him and Lyle by his wife. And while his statement Friday did not mention the decision to include the incestuous references, he seemed shocked by the overall portrayal of him and his brother. While the show presents the brothers as victims of abuse, he said it also condemns them, as the justice system did when a jury found them guilty of first-degree murder with the special circumstances of lying in wait and multiple murder.

In his statement, posted to social media by his wife Tammi Menendez, Erik said: “I believed we had moved past the lies and the ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, and had created a caricature of Lyle that was rooted in the horrible and blatant likes (sic) that were rampant on the show. I can only believe they did this on purpose. It is with a heavy heart that I say I believe Ryan Murphy could not be so naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives to do this without malicious intent.

“It’s sad to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crimes has taken the painful truth several steps back — back in time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that men weren’t sexually abused, and that men experienced rape trauma differently than women,” Erik Menendez continued. “Those horrible lies have been disrupted and exposed over the past two decades by countless brave victims who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy is fleshing out his horrible story through disgusting and horrific character portrayals of Lyle and myself, and disheartening smears.”

Neither Murphy nor Netflix have yet publicly commented on Menendez’s Friday statement about the series, which is now streaming in full and is the No. 1 series in the U.S. on the platform. The Hollywood Reporter did not receive a response from Murphy or Netflix when asked for comment on Monday.